Australia is known for the low numbers of Novel Coronavirus, or COVID-19, cases, and its Government is marketing itself around the world as a credible expert in economic, logistics and medical areas.

It is engaged with the US President, the UK PM and other world leaders, its PM Scott Morrison using grand language to describe shadowy results of a year of confusion. Its Treasurer is about to release the latest in a confused sequence of Budgetary instruments, apparently without solving past and current problems.

This first forensic analysis is based on a detailed knowledge of bubonic plague's impacts in Sydney and across the world and update discussions with medical academics on this pandemic.

Solutions are based on 8 years of work on Sydney and national problems, including peer-endorsement of innovative and rigourous concepts and systems.

The book uses chronologies, pictures and quotes to reveal delays, blunders and waste that might have slipped the memory. There are lessons for every city, state and nation.

The conclusion is that Australia failed in many respects because it negated OECD best-practice guidelines and had an isolated silo-type decisionmaking environment that was driven by ideology and administered by time-servers. Central executive structures have been de-skilled with the rise of populist politicians.

I was main professional advisor to the Hon. Peter Cox MP when he was Minister for Minerals and Energy and other things in NSW. We inherited a mess and swung straight into starting energy conservation in Australia: we took 3 power station sites off the Electricity Commission to force demand management, $140 million off the gas company similarly, set up off-peak assistance mechanisms based on the London Energy Trust to allow lower-income families to reduce their bills and not rely on handouts. We set up flow reduction Platypus devices on taps and showers and cost-recovery home repair programs, for similar reasons.

These were done professionally especially through a world-famous engineer who conducted my Inquiry into Electricity Generation Planning, not like today’s snake oil salesmen who closet themselves with carpetbaggers for bidding on profiteering directions, extending coal mines past 2050. We also set up Australia’s first solar farm at White Cliffs with the UNSW, and I opened the first wind turbine on Kooragang Island as well as hosting the 5th Post-Rio Local Agenda 21 conference, with David Suzuki.

On budget reform, I won the Treasury’s praise for reform of the 10,000 EFT Admin Services (“a model for other agencies”); and won a Gold Medal (true, PM, nor Berejiklian bullshit) at the Local Government Awards for the open and participative reform of Newcastle City’s complex structures and flows.

I don’t believe the PM’s acolytes can claim even remotely similar achievements. I’m not beating my chest but am asserting myself over the losers in today’s Federal and State Governments. That is a central lesson for every country to take on board.